Gulf Coast basketball teams enjoying hot starts

Wednesday

PANAMA CITY — Vernette Skeete exudes a particular vibe that she dislikes losing more than she likes winning.

PANAMA CITY — Vernette Skeete exudes a particular vibe that she dislikes losing more than she likes winning.

“Everybody always says that sometimes it’s good when you lose,” said Skeete, the women’s basketball coach at Gulf Coast. “I disagree. … If my team learned anything, it was ‘When coach says it’s time to hit the gym, she’s probably right.’ ”

Skeete was making a reference to her team’s lone loss of the season, 56-51 to Walters State on Nov. 23. The Lady Commodores have bounced back with three straight wins to improve to 9-1 headed into a road trip to Daytona Beach this weekend. GC, ranked second in the state and 10th nationally, plays Hillsborough on Friday at 3 p.m. CST and Daytona State on Saturday at 1 p.m.

The Lady Commodores have averaged 83.7 points a game this season and allowed only 42.8. Only one opponent, Daytona State, has topped the 60-point mark against GC. Walters State was able to force GC into a halfcourt game and held the Lady Commodores to a 17-for-56 shooting performance from the field.

“I look at it, that’s 30 shots below what we usually take,” Skeete said. “We could not score. It helped us focus on getting in the gym a little bit more and taking high-percentage shots. They had some size, and we had to take a lot of jump shots and threes. It was hard to find a rhythm. That’s why I’m going on about getting in the gym. When you’re winning, getting 80 points a game and most of them are layups, it’s hard to get them to focus on that as much.”

Skeete said her players have succeeded using the first or second scoring option on each trip down the floor against lesser opponents. But when a team takes those options away, Skeete said she would like to see her players move the ball around and try to find an easier, closer shot rather than rely on an open jumper from the perimeter.

“Sometimes you have to learn to read the defense a little better and think about what is the better option,” Skeete said. “You might be open, but if you rotated (the ball) and set a back screen, we could have had a layup instead of a wide-open 3.”

Skeete said she knows little about Hillsborough, ranked seventh in the state, but she credited Daytona State, which is ranked 10thin Florida. GC beat Daytona State 83-61 last Saturday, but Skeete noted that her players were outscored in the second half.

“It was 50-16 in the first half, and they scored 45 in the second half,” Skeete said. “Last weekend everybody got to play significant minutes, and we did mix it up. But by the same token, we know they have the ability to score if we’re not moving in our rotation correctly.

“We know we have to go play them at home. They get to play on their own goals. And they have a talented freshman (forward Abigail Asoro, a 6-foot-1 native of Sweden) who is the leading scorer in the state and has been the player of the week. When we beat them she probably had four points in the first half, and she had 21 in the second. They beat us in the second half. If the score had been 0-0 (at halftime), we would have lost. That’s how I take it.”

The Gulf Coast men, meanwhile, have ascended to third in this week’s state poll. The Commodores (10-1) are riding a 10-game winning streak but face a difficult challenge this weekend in Ocala. GC plays Central Florida (ranked fifth in the state) on Friday at 6:30 p.m. CST, Brevard (No. 10 in Florida) on Saturday at 5 p.m. and Miami-Dade on Sunday at 3 p.m.

“We know this is going to be our most difficult weekend of the season to date,” GC coach Jay Powell said. “There are several reasons. It’s on the road. Central Florida is a team that we beat the last time we played (85-80 on Nov. 9), so they’ll be looking for revenge. It’s three games in three days, which is tough on anyone’s body but especially now that we’ve played 11 games in less than a month.

“The combination of those things is a challenge. We were running sprints at the end of practice yesterday and making the point that we’re going to have obstacles. Like these sprints, we’ve got to fight through it, be tough and have confidence in ourselves to get through it, get around obstacles and keep moving forward.”

Powell said the sophomore leadership on his team has been crucial, and he said the freshmen are improving and making the Commodores more formidable. He said the focus of his players has been top-notch.

“I think we’re playing with a great deal of confidence,” Powell added. “Last summer (assistant coach Jordan Carter) and I sat down. … I wanted us to really build a program around three ideals: Confidence, unity and toughness. As coaches, we don’t need to do anything that shatters a man’s confidence, though I always want to be honest with them.”

Powell said his student-athletes will take final exams next week, and GC won’t play another game until the Commodores host the Gulf Coast Holiday Classic beginning Dec. 28 at the Billy Harrison Field House. He said his players will focus on cardiovascular training and will be required to make 250 shots a day at practice. When they return to school on Dec. 26, Powell said, they will resume practicing normally.

“I will give the guys a lot of credit,” Powell said. “They have stuck together and done a very nice job of staying positive and keeping their mind right. I need to give them credit on that because there’s always the potential for guys missing their family, missing their mother, maybe missing grandma’s cooking. But the guys have done a good job sticking with the program and remaining focused on the task at hand.”

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